Event

In 1996, Chris Nicola, an ex-NYC cop and world-renowned cave explorer, makes a discovery deep underground in the largest cave system in the Ukraine. Buttons, shoes, a key and names scrawled on the cave wall, are mute testimonies to what happened here long ago. The story that Nicola has stumbled upon begins in 1942, when Ukrainian authorities, in conjunction with the Nazi occupiers, begin rounding up the Jews for deportation to concentration camps. Encouraged by one mother's burning wish to save her children, five families defy the soldiers and descend into the eerie cave system outside of their town. It is the beginning of a 511 day odyssey into a dark, damp maze and never-ending night. No Place On Earth recounts the longest recorded underground survival in human history.

VISITING SPEAKER:Shortly after his birth in England in 1951 Christos Nicola immigrated to the US with his parents. With the exception of a 10 year period when he lived in Washington, DC as a police officer and later as a labor union organizer, he has lived most of his live in law enforcement in New York City, most currently as an Investigator for New York State. He has earned undergraduate degrees in Forensic Psychology, Criminology, and Physics, a MA in Criminal Justice, is currently pursuing both a degree in Film and an MS in Forensic Psychology, and has done post graduate work while in a Criminal Justice Doctoral program. A long-time cave explorer of 35 years, having visited Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, South America and Eastern Europe, he has, as part of an ongoing 20 year research project, enriched the world through his extensive public speaking engagements and book, "The Secret of Priest's Grotto: A Holocaust Survival Story" about how a Jewish family survived WWII by taking refuge in a cave for 544 days.